Wednesday, May 25, 2011

New Gemei X760+

In the comments of the previous post Neno provided the following link:

http://www.it.com.cn/audio/mp4/news/2010/03/10/09/757299_1.html

So I asked ChinaChip. That is the upcoming Gemei X760+ (yes, same name than the old x760+, fun!), and the specs in the linked page are wrong. It's due out by the end of May according to ChinaChip.

It's CC1800 based, same SoC than in the Gemei A330. LCD is 4.3" 480x272. I like the wealth of controls in the lower side.

Unfortunately work on the CC1800 has been slow. It's no fun to write code based on other code with no comments and no programmer's manual, plus I recently got sponsoring for porting dingux to a JZ4755 based device (can't say much about that at the moment), which will be eating up absolutely all of my spare time for the next couple of months. As I already said, I'm not happy being the bottleneck here, so I asked ChinaChip to let me disclose the information they provided on the CC1800 but got no reply, so for now I must honor my promise of keeping the information closed.

51 comments:

Nope. It's a handheld console. The gamebox should benefit from the work on the JZ4755, though.

BTW, I have a pending post on the JZ4755. The hardware is hideous. They went with a two layer design (to save, what, $2?) thus violating every possible design recommendation from Ingenic (and good electronics design practice, and common sense, and...). Doesn't seem good judgement. No wonder it has some signal quality issues. I don't understand how they risk such brand image harm just for pennies... oh, wait... did I write "brand image"?.

Word direct from ChinaChip is that the link is wrong and they're NOT releasing an A380 (for now?). Instead there's an upcoming CC1800 based X760+ which looks surprisingly similar to the one shown at the linked page.

Plus even if that was an A380 and was CC2000 based the specs would be wrong. According to my notes from when I was there, CC2000 is PPC architecture (PPC476+FPU+DSP+2D/3D GPU), clocked @ 700-800MHz.

[quote]Plus even if that was an A380 and was CC2000 based the specs would be wrong. According to my notes from when I was there, CC2000 is PPC architecture (PPC476+FPU+DSP+2D/3D GPU), clocked @ 700-800MHz. [/quote]

So if the CC1800 is ARM based and the CC2000 is PPC based, then work done for the Gemei A330 is not be usable for the Gemei A380 :-(

I skip the Gemei A330 because for me it adds little compared to my Dingoo A320 and was hoping that the forthcoming Gemei A380 could run software for the A330 out of the box.

I think I'm not the only one who is dissapointed whith this news.Given the low price of the GA330 (less than 70$) it could be an outstanding success if it had linux on it. Compared to more expensive machines like caanoo or wiz, not having linux is the only thing missing.Please, could you at least do a post on where to start with the porting process, what you have already done, similar devices to use as an start point ...Thank you very much

The LCD is a GPM940B0. It's not a "smart" LCD which means the CC1800 LCD controller is in charge of feeding data and sync signals. This means there's no inherent limitation in the hardware, and you can synchronize to VSYNC as long as the CC1800 LCD controller is capable of generating a VSYNC interrupt (which I don't know).

Even if the it wasn't able, you can always set a timer to generate an interrupt very close to the expected VSYNC and then do a tiny busy loop wait. A bit dirty but would do the job.

Booboo sincerely his "honesty" in not releasing the code is leaving everyone who bought the A330 Gemei outraged, not by its atidude, but the Chinese blocking the enrichment of the device itself ...If they "open their eyes" could see their futures customers into the other portables how Caanoo, Letcool, Dingoo A320 ( it's his), Dingoo Tech A330, Dingoo Tech A380...I don't know when his go see that all we want is the best for the Gemei A330 and Gemei X760+LE (the same cpu)...I wish the Chinese would take seriously the requests of the community

Or maybe the name is Gemei same problem, as the old Gemei X760 + also did not have the luck to have a port of Dingux...

Also, do you think filling gemei's e-mail (what's their e-mail, by the way? I see no "contact us" on their site) with requests from about 100 different people for them to acquire some frakking common sense and let you release your code would work?

In the gemeitech page not found the a330 machine. Is a obsolete product? Your official contacts with gemeitech was only about the a330 machine, not about the x760+. If there are no machine, there are no contract. Please, help the developers (and the users) opening the code.

I just emailed them, but be warned it's extremely unlikely they'll do anything about it. I offered several times to make a proper spanish locale, for FREE, for ALL of their products, and I'm still waiting.

Booboo, send them, please say that I can do the translation into Portuguese for free, not that I do not know English, but I prefer to use the FW in Portuguese I tried to edit the file. Dlx by hex, but I could not I have here the file with the texts in Portuguese, and one more question, the wail have email?Good afternoon.

Can only complain, if anything, about too much work right now but not for much longer. Prospect is grim here in Spain up to the point of being a real career dead end, so I'm considering my options. Know of any interesing job openings? :-)

ChinaChip contact is cold. Whatever their plans are, they're keeping them to themselves. Talk to them once in a while but interest in linux support on their hardware seems to have completely faded away.

I would go for a JZ4755 Gemei games console system, only because it is MIPS, as we are missing more pressence of that excellent CPU in the market.The PSP is still non-programmable, or requires some strange modding.

Hello, I have a question, Mr. booboo.I've heard before that you have no plans on working on a port of Linux for the SPMP8000, but, could you consider helping some people that are working on it? It's being done, I'll share the link if you're interested.http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ports.arm.kernel/136093

Hey there, Booboo (couldn't resist), are there any updates to anything Dingoo/Gemei? I love my A320 and your fabulous Dingux, but I'm looking for something with a bit more "oomph" so I can play my PS1/N64 titles.

Thanks for the interest, but no, not much console related work these days. After one project in which I spent a huge amount of time and effort went under I have focused on stuff that actually pays the bills.

The amazing guys behind OpenDingux have been working on a JZ4770 based handheld console, but I'm not sure how that is progressing, since unfortunately I did not have the time to get involved.